Save the Gladiator Tomb!

T’other day we mentioned that Italy plans to rebury to so-called ‘Gladiator Tomb’ found a few years ago due to lack of funds (‘Gladiator Tomb’ to be Reburied? (‘Gladiator Tomb’ to be Reburied?) … although I didn’t say it at the time, although reburial of monuments to preserve them is not uncommon, this one seems a bit short-sighted. You have to think that the tourist potential of this would be huge … On a more practical side, the site really has not been studied and so the fine folks at the AIRC have set up a petition urging the powers-that-be to reconsider the reburial plans. The goal is to get 5000 signatures and so far they’re sitting at 639 (as of this writing, of course). Check out (and perhaps sign) the petition here:

2 thoughts on “Save the Gladiator Tomb!”

For a more detailed summary of events regarding the petition, see the AIRC summary on our news link (on romanculture.org).
We have actually launched a kickstarter proposal to fund more of our educational documentary videos (free, online)– but look at kickstarter projects for a second. It isn’t really set up for large conservation projects (the site needs 2 million euros, at least). Plus, the Ministry isn’t set up to receive money in such a format. It’s quite complicated, actually. We are working on setting up a separate, large conservation project– and for this we are also discussing with potential corporate sponsors, universities, etc. Not sure if we can crowdsource conservation work. I hope so! At any rate effective conservation work is costly! For the Gladiator tomb site, the Italian government could step in – or at least share the cost with a private sponsor- (e.g., Colosseum- Tod’s) but these are new initiatives in Italy. We have much more experience in the States b/c it’s the norm. The first thing is that the petition and Russell Crowe’s comments have started a conversation– real, new conservations. That is a step in the right direction. We’re following this one closely and will update the ipetition and our site with news.

rogueclassicism: 1. n. an abnormal state or condition resulting from the forced migration from a lengthy Classical education into a profoundly unClassical world; 2. n. a blog about Ancient Greece and Rome compiled by one so afflicted (v. "rogueclassicist"); 3. n. a Classics blog.